EDH deck update

Since it’s been so long since I’ve written here, I wanted to take a moment and present my current stall of decks that I play in my paper meta. Click the links on each of the decks’ names to go to my TappedOut page for each decklist. Some of the card choices might seem strange, but bear in mind that I’ve got all of the decks sleeved up at the same time, and I don’t keep a staples binder or similar system – all to save time when gaming (and because I prefer to keep my decks as-is). All of them, aside maybe the last one, are competitive within my paper meta.

The Greatest Teacher – Dragonlord OjutaiMy Dragonlord Ojutai deck is a fairly straight-forward blue-white control deck. Originally, it was built to emphasize Ojutai’s role as a teacher (since I too teach for a living), but while the theme was very easy to build, because many blue cards refer to things like knowledge or study, it has given way to the deck’s strength bit by bit. It wants to sit idle and make land drops for quite some time, cast one of the draw X-spells to get ahead on cards, and finally win through Ojutai suited up with one of the deck’s Vigilance enablers. It’s more controlling than most Ojutai lists I’ve seen, but it suits my playstyle. It’s my favourite deck ever, and I’ve made sure it’s noticed – I’ve got the custom play mat, I’ve got two of the Dragons of Tarkir prerelease Ojutai dice, the basic lands in the deck are all Dragons of Tarkir with the proper art and so on. It’s not a bad deck but it’s not a fast deck either. For quick games, I never bring this out.

Dark Necessities – Liliana, Heretical Healer
I’ve played several variants of mono-black in several formats, including EDH. Currently, my mono-black deck of choice is Liliana, Heretical Healer. I’ve tried making a fairly competitive deck that still feels a bit flavourful, and the list is my result. In short, I want to cast Liliana at an early opportunity, flip her with one of the deck’s many sacrifice outlets, and begin getting value from mostly her +2 ability. I really like that the deck makes use of some pretty far-out cards, like Geth’s Grimoire, and Blood Pet – the latter which is a pretty decent outlet that replaces the mana investment to cast it. It also sees almost no play in the format, and I find the 6th edition/Tempest art strangely cute. Unlike my historical black decks, Liliana sometimes has troubles closing games, but I like it still.

The Getaway – Reyhan, Last of the Abzan/Tana, the BloodsowerI’m a big fan of Jund as a colour combination, but I’m not a fan of any of the available commanders. I looked over the available partners and found I liked Reyhan most in the colours which meant she had to partner with Vial Smasher, or Tana or otherwise I would be left without the Last Abzan. None of the Jund partners synch together in a completely natural way but I went with these two and took the deck down a “counter matters” route echoing my old Anafenza deck but with red over white and with a tokens sub-theme. This means the deck can go both wide and tall, which is very useful. I’ve focused on creatures that generate their own +1/+1 counters so as to not be stuck with tiny creatures not being able to grow by themselves, but there are a couple of exceptions. An obvious combo, which I didn’t see until it came up in a game, is Inferno Titan + Bow of Nylea / Mer-Ek Nightblade. The deck has many of these small interactions, which I like, and it can play long games through things like Genesis / Phyrexian Reclamation and it has access to a nice toolbox of creatures through Survival of the Fittest / Birthing Pod. My favourite cards of the deck are the cards that tend to support both the +1/+1 counter theme and the tokens theme – Bloodspore Thrinax, and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar to name a couple.

Mini Epic – Mairsil, the PretenderMy newest deck uses one of the commanders from the Commander 2017 release, and it’s the one that might be the most broken of them all. It’s pretty easy to make Mairsil into a combo machine, able to exile just a couple of cards and then generate infinite mana, mill everyone to death, and make nobody have a good time. I don’t want to do that, I want to play Magic, and as such I built a very casual take on Mairsil. Mostly because I wanted to play with Morphling again after more than a decade. I’ve also included a bunch of cards to enhance the “swiss army knife” feel of the deck – charms and commands most notably. The deck is very new and will probably go through many changes over the coming weeks.

Lastly, there’s of course Wydwen, but my Wydwen deck is currently going through an overhaul, so I’m not prepared to present a good enough list to be worth publication. It’s still the same good old deck, though – control elements, card draw, equipments, and the best Dimir commander ever printed.